Factors Related to Knowledge Creation and Career Outcomes in French Academia

Abstract

In response to the increasing discourse on academic careers and knowledge creation, we develop and test a model predicting research performance in the field of management outside the Anglo-Saxon countries. Based on comprehensive data of French academics, we examine various factors—career-related and demographic factors like gender—that play a role in determining academic research performance in an increasingly global academia. The role of the English language is positively related to citations, but not to the volume of papers or their global or national recognition. Higher institutions’ reputations were positively associated to number of papers, citations, and national recognition. Strikingly, there was no relationship with global recognition, suggesting that the reputation of institutions plays a role, but only insofar as the national context and without spillover into the global academic scene. Finally, men (as opposed to women) were over-performing both in publications’ quality and quantity. Career experience had a positive effect, although this reduced gradually over time. Our findings can help individuals’ career decision-making and institutional investment in human-capital. We offer an original contribution to facilitate the understanding of factors that may influence research performance outside of Anglo-Saxon academia by opening of the black box of knowledge development, exposing the role of academic publications and recognition.